Sangamon County history: The quick 1920s rise  and fall  of local KKK

Saturday

Jul 12, 2014 at 10:31 PM

The high point of Ku Klux Klan activity in Sangamon County probably was a parade from the Statehouse to the Illinois State Fairgrounds on Oct. 11, 1924.

About 2,000 Klan members, 400 of them from Sangamon County, participated in the march, the Illinois State Journal reported the next day. Supporters lined Springfield streets, and the fairgrounds Grandstand was standing room only.

Local Klansmen built three floats, the Journal said: one calling for the closure of Ellis Island, a second picturing a crucifix and the third declaring, “’The public school system is good enough for us.” (Immigrants and Catholics, who had their own parochial schools, were primary Klan targets at the time.)

Describing the scene, the newspaper said: “Flaming torches, flags and the white uniforms made the parade a most picturesque event. Thousands of people, many of whom applauded the marchers, lined the sidewalks and crowded into the street.

“Two crosses were lighted at the speakers’ stand at the fairgrounds. ...

“‘The group mind must rule,’ (Klan imperial wizard H.W. Evans of Texas) said, ‘and this group must be 100 percent American. We have foreigners who think they are faithful to our country, but they are not. They came here dissatisfied. Their instinct is for their own country. They look upon America as a glorified Italy, a glorified France, Germany, England or whatever country they came from.’”

Several other large Klan gatherings were held in the Springfield area in the 1920s, most featuring parades, cross burnings and secret rites.

“They used Springfield for kind of a central meeting place,” Springfield businessman J.R. “Bud” Fitzpatrick said in 1980 interviews for the Oral History Project at what is now the University of Illinois Springfield. “It was just a case of an exhibition, of showing their strength through their uniforms and so on. But they never got down to where they hurt anybody.”

Most Klan agitation in central Illinois was aimed at Catholics, not African-Americans, Fitzpatrick said. “Blacks were almost totally immune from the deal,” he said.

The Klan began organizing in Sangamon County about 1921 and grew rapidly at first. For example, 185 men were initiated into the local Klan chapter — named unironically, apparently, Abraham Lincoln Council No. 3 — during ceremonies near Auburn in September 1922.

By the time of the 1924 parade, however, local Klan operations already were under pressure. The statewide Klan had filed suit in March to suspend a dozen members of the local Klan, including the Grand Titan, and the board of a Pleasant Plains church had fired pastor A.W. Williams after Williams delivered a Klan lecture from the church pulpit.

Testimony in a lawsuit Williams filed over his back pay may not have helped the Klan’s image. According to an Illinois State Journal report on the trial:

“Considerable merriment was evoked when six flowery, lacy valentines, bearing the signature ‘Your Little K.K.K. Preacher,’ and directed to a half dozen women members of the congregation, were introduced as evidence under the heading of Exhibit B. Mr. Williams admitted sending the valentines.”

The Klan in the northern U.S. disintegrated in the mid-1920s as a result of scandals involving Klan leaders elsewhere, and news about Klan activities virtually disappears from Springfield newspapers from 1927 on.

Excerpted from SangamonLink.org, an online encyclopedia sponsored by the Sangamon County Historical Society. Excerpts will be published twice a month. To read more, or to learn how you can contribute to the encyclopedia, go to SangamonLink.org